Moral Implications of Data-Mining, Key-word Searches, and Targeted Electronic Surveillance
In Bradley J. Strawser, Fritz Allhoff & Adam Henschke (eds.), Binary Bullets. Oxford, UK: (2015)
Abstract
This chapter addresses the morality of two types of national security electronic
surveillance (SIGINT) programs: the analysis of communication “metadata” and
dragnet searches for keywords in electronic communication. The chapter
develops a standard for assessing coercive government action based on respect
for the autonomy of inhabitants of liberal states and argues that both types of
SIGINT can potentially meet this standard. That said, the collection of metadata
creates opportunities for abuse of power, and so judgments about the
trustworthiness and competence of the government engaging in the collection
must be made in order to decide whether metadata collection is justified in a
particular state. Further, the moral standard proposed has a reflexive element
justifying adversary states’ intelligence collection against one another.
Therefore, high-tech forms of SIGINT can only be justified at the cost of
justifying cruder versions of signals intelligence collection practiced by a state’s
less-advanced adversaries.
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